The Jewish Mother: A Theology

By Meir Soloveichik

A new look at matrilineal descent.

Indeed, the rabbis recognized the significance of these diverse parental roles, and gave them resonance within a conception of divinity that combined both masculine and feminine elements. The immanent divine presence, for example, is described by the feminine term shechina (“presence”). This is related directly to the conception of motherly love. “Whenever Rabbi Yosef heard the footsteps of his mother,” the midrash relates, “he would say: ‘Let me rise because the shechina is coming.’”²⁹ For the sages, to honor one’s parents is also to honor the distinct parental ways in which God interacts with the Jewish people. “Behind every mother,” Rabbi Soloveitchik comments, “young or old, happy or sad, trails the shechina. And behind every father, erect or stooped, in playful or stern mood, walks malka kadisha, the Holy King. This is not mysticism. It is halacha.”³⁰

The rabbis of the Talmud also recognized that the child reciprocates a mother’s intense, physically founded love. A child experiences his mother as the primary source of nurturing in his life, while the father is experienced as educator. A child is therefore more naturally inclined to revere his mother, and to fear his father:

R. Judah the Prince said: It is revealed and known to the Creator that a son honors his mother more than his father, as she sways him by her tender words. Therefore, the Holy One placed the obligation of honoring the father before that of the mother [in the verse “Honor your father and your mother”].³¹ And it is revealed and known to the Creator that a son fears his father more than his mother because he teaches him Tora; therefore, the Holy One placed the obligation of fear of the mother before that of the father [in the verse “You shall fear every man his mother and father”].³²

Perhaps the most striking articulation of the rabbinic belief in the intensity of a child’s love for his mother is the Midrash’s statement that God himself referred to Israel as his mother, because that was the most intense analogy for love in human language:

R. Shimon the son of Yohai asked R. Eleazar the son of R. Yose: Have you perhaps heard from your father an interpretation of the verse “the crown wherewith his mother hath crowned him?”³³ R. Eleazar replied: Yes. Said R. Shimon: How does it go? Said R. Eleazar: The verse may be understood by the parable of a king who had an only daughter whom he loved exceedingly. He called her “my daughter,” but as time went on and his love kept increasing, he came to call her “my sister”—“My sister, My bride.”³⁴ And finally, as his love grew more intense, he called her “My mother,” as is indicated by the verse “Attend unto me, O my people, and give ear unto me, O my nation,” where “O my nation” [u’le’ummi] may also be read “O my mother” [u’le’immi]. R. Shimon the son of Yohai [upon hearing this] rose, kissed R. Eleazar on the brow, and said: Had I come into the world only to hear this interpretation from you, it would have been enough for me.”³⁵

The Talmud’s insistence that the mother is the source of a child’s Jewishness, while at the same time insisting that the father determines one’s spiritual and political framework, is intimately linked with the biblical and rabbinic understanding of the natural parental relationship. Jewish law asserts that the father is given the primary responsibility in training the child to develop an independent moral and religious existence. “The father is duty-bound to circumcise his son, to redeem him [if he is a first-born], to teach him Tora, to teach him a trade, and, some say, to teach him to swim as well.”³⁶ If a child is Jewish, it is his father’s identity that determines the child’s religious, political, financial, and familial obligations. With respect to these responsibilities, the rabbis say, only “the father’s family is considered family” while the mother’s family “is not considered family.” With respect to tribal affiliation, and tribal land inheritance, the father’s family, too, is determinative.³⁷

At the same time, the halacha affirms that the natural familial bond is first and foremost forged through gestation and parturition. The mother provides a bodily, familial link to herself, and thereby to her Jewish family. One descended from a Jewish father but a non-Jewish mother may be genetically linked to a Jew, but has a much stronger familial connection to one who is not a member of the Jewish family.³⁸

This point, that the intimacy of the mother-child relationship is the foundation of the matrilineal principle, finds powerful expression in two other talmudic dictums, each possessing far-reaching legal implications.³⁹ The first can be found in what is known as the Noahide law, the basic code of morality that the rabbis considered the foundation of any civilized society. According to normative rabbinic interpretation of this code, incest with one’s sister is committed only when the two individuals in question share a mother, whether or not they share a father.⁴⁰ Although in the realm of covenantal responsibility, the rabbis insisted that it is the father’s family that “is considered family,” incest involves the violation of the strongest of natural familial boundaries. This interpretation of the Noahide incest prohibition reflects the rabbis’ realization that motherhood is the strongest link in the chain that is the natural family, so that siblings who are both children of the same mother are related in a way that siblings who share only a father are not.

Second, the Talmud discusses the case of a woman who converts to Judaism mid-pregnancy. The child’s genetic mother was not Jewish, but his birth mother is. Is the child a Jew, or a Gentile? The answer is that though the child was conceived by a non-Jew, he was borne by, and born to, a Jewish woman and is therefore a member of the Jewish family.⁴¹ The doctrine of matrilineal descent does not imply that the mother’s genetic contribution to the child at the moment of conception is more important than that of the father; it insists, rather, that the bond forged by childbearing and birth is stronger than any other familial attachment.

The doctrine of matrilineal descent is thus far less incongruous with the biblical and rabbinic traditions than it would seem at first glance. On the contrary, it follows naturally from them. God chose people to serve him in the fullness of their humanity, not only with their souls but also with their bodies. This, in turn, could not be accomplished through the election of individuals, but only through the founding of a faith upon a natural family. But if we are to celebrate, and sanctify, our God-given human instincts, including and especially kinship, then no form of kinship is stronger, more natural, and more human, than motherhood. The angels’ choice of words, in a debate they are said to have had with Moses, is noteworthy; to be human, they scornfully said, is to be “one born of woman.” Thus God’s embracing of our humanity involves taking the most intensely physical of experiences—the giving of one’s body to the creation of another physical human being—and sanctifying it by placing it in the service of God. Motherhood becomes the medium for the continuity of the chosen people.

Judaism is a faith founded primarily on familial identity. In the Bible, it is male figures who most often shape the familial character of our faith. God is known through history as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He elected Aaron and his seed to minister to him in his Temple. And he chose David to rule and to produce an heir, a male messiah through whom the Davidic line would be reborn, the enemies of Israel defeated, and the world redeemed.

Yet precisely because Judaism involves the election of a natural family, it is Jewish women rather than men who serve as the foundation of our familial faith. If, despite disinterest and disregard for one’s heritage, a Jew cannot sever his or her bond to nation, family, and covenant, it is because the Almighty guarantees, to paraphrase Isaiah, that a mother cannot forget her child, nor refrain from having mercy on the child she bore, and that God, therefore, will not forget Israel either. Anyone born to a Jewish mother is bound, by her motherly love, and by God’s motherly love, to the Jewish family and to every other Jew. The centrality of mother-love in Judaism thus means that all Jews are linked by familial ties that can never be undone. Born into a Judaism that is not just a faith but a family, we are all joined for eternity to God—and to each other.

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Meir Soloveichik is an Associate Fellow at the Shalem Center, and a Contributing Editor of AZURE. He is Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan, and is working on his doctorate at Princeton University. His last essay in AZURE was “God’s Beloved: A Defense of Chosenness” (Azure 19, Winter 2005).

Notes

1. Cited in Shaye J.D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California, 1999).

2. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, p. 283.

3. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, p. 291.

4. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, p. 291.

5. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, p. 307.

6. R. Kendall Soulen, “Israel and the Church,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, eds. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 2000), p. 172.

7. Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1996), p. 57.

8. Shabbat 88b-89a.

9. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984), p. 33.

10. Eliezer Berkovits, God, Man and History, ed. David Hazony (Jerusalem:Shalem, 2004), pp. 123-124.

11. Matthew 12:46-50.

12. Stanley Hauerwas, “Christian Ethics in Jewish Terms: A Response to David Novak,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, p. 139.

13.  Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith, p. 67.

14. Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith, p. 67.

15. Genesis 3:20.

16. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships (New York: Toras HaRav Foundation, 2000), p. 106.

17. Genesis 17:4.

18. Genesis 18:19.

19. Deuteronomy 8:5.

20. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 162.

21. Proverbs 31:2.

22. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 163.

23. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 163.

24. Deuteronomy 8:5.

25. Psalms 131:2-3.

26. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 165.

27. Sota 12a.

28. Sota 11b.

29. Kidushin 31a.

30. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, p. 168.

31. Exodus 20:12.

32. Leviticus 19:3; Kidushin 30b-31a.

33. Song of Songs 3:11.

34. Song of Songs 5:1.

35. Exodus Rabba 52:5.

36. Kidushin 29a.

37. Yevamot 99a.

38. It is important to note that while Judaism places an emphasis on the centrality of motherhood in defining identity, it is possible to become a Jew without being born to a Jewish family—that is, through conversion. Still, a convert does not simply proclaim Jewish faith, but becomes a full member of the Jewish family—an identity which, like the identity of someone born Jewish, cannot be undone. It is thus no coincidence that the paradigmatic convert, Ruth the Moabite, was a woman who converted by declaring to Naomi not only “your God is my God,” but also “your people is my people” (Ruth 1:16). Nor is it a coincidence that the rabbis refer to a convert as one who is “like unto a newborn child” (Yevamot 97b). To become a convert is to acquire an intense familial bond to the people of Israel and to the God of Israel, akin to the familial bond between mother and child. The theme of matrilineal descent is thus stressed in the context of conversion as well.

39. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness, p. 291.

40. Sanhedrin 58a.

41. Yevamot 97a-98a.